"Until I got the invitation to meet with him at the studio, I would ignore him on the street," a winking Iggy Waxman says of Eli Abramov. "He represents all of the things I love most in music. Working with him to create electro, pop and '80s is a real treat for me. For me, who was a moody child, to know that all those years later I'd have a chance to work with the person who wrote the music of 'Al Tadliku Li Ner,' is really exciting. Today when I see a clip of 'The Clique,' it's hard for me to believe it's him."
Waxman, 39, and Abramov, 58, have formed a new duo called Mock Stereo. They are launching their debut album together, "High in the Low 60s," at Tel Aviv's Abraxas club. It is being released on the High Fidelity label - first on the Internet and then as a CD.
As guitarist-founder of The Clique, the modest Abramov is considered one of the symbols of the Israeli "dark 1980s." Waxman is his polar opposite; she has a fiery temperament and likes to have the last word. "Eli thought it would be easy to work with me because we're neighbors, but he was wrong. I'm the most not-easy person in the world," she says.
None of Waxman's subsequent three albums have matched the success of her first, "Red," from 1995. It featured such hits as "Ein li ma lomar lekha" and "Tisa oti le'isha." At the time she was married to Hemi Rudner, the Eifo Hayeled soloist who also produced "Red." He also produced Waxman's second album, "I don't wait for the postman anymore," ("Lo mehaka yoter ladavar" ), featuring the hit "Baderekh le'Milwaukee."
The media response was cooler for "Adinot" (2000 ) and "Mistovevim" (2006 ). Waxman's rocker image faded, especially after 2010 when she became a host on the Channel 24 music television show, "Yafeh Lakh" along with Orna Datz and Michal Amdursky. A few months ago she tried her hand on the same channel's reality show "Heichal Hatehila" ("Hall of Fame" ).
She and Abramov have a shared musical history. She worked with bassist Oved Efrat and the late drummer Jean Jacques Goldberg, both from The Clique. In a tribute concert to Goldberg, she and her band hosted Abramov and together they performed The Cliques' "Kol Ha'emet" ).
Abramov says he and Waxman share a low frustration threshhold. "When I work with singers, I get fed up after a half hour," he says. That's why their sessions are always short.
"Two takes. You come, record and go," says Waxman. "The first time I heard the demos of the music he wrote, I left. The problem was that he sang on them. I would always tell him, 'Eli, it's a fantastic song, but why are you singing'?"
After The Clique, which lasted from 1979 to 1983, released its first album, Abramov played with the short-lived supergroup 4tis along with Efrat, Goldenberg, Rami Fortis and Ronen Ben Tal. In 1995, after spending a few years in the United States, Abramov returned to Israel and produced "Kol Ha'ahavot Ha'asurot" for The Clique singer Danny Dotan. Abramov went on to work with Corinne Alal, Dana International, Kerach 9 (Ice Nine, Noam Rotem's former band ) and even the Stomp-like Mayumana. In 2001 and 2003 he released solo electronica albums under the name Pitchbend.
Never mind the Buzzcocks
Mock Stereo's album includes samples from esoteric 1960s records. With the exception of a very familiar Doors reference, they decline to name names. "Someone wrote to us that it's a pity we don't imitate Beck with the hook in our song, 'The Word Is,'" says Waxman, "but the truth is that he even sampled that riff. Every song of ours has samples from other songs, but ones that honor the originals," she says Abramov and The Clique launched their comeback warming up for Britain's Buzzcocks in Tel Aviv last March. Abramov then began hours on the computer mixing Waxman's voice with his own musical hooks.
He wrote all of Mock Stereo's songs, but says the associations generated by the lyrics are much more importeven than the words. "I'm not a great writer," Abramov confesses. In The Clique, Danny Dotan always wrote the lyrics. Mock Stereo's are a salad of '60s cliches. "In 'Something New' I imagine I'm singing like on Depeche Mode's first record, and another song reminds me of ABBA," Waxman says.
Mock Stereo seems more suited to clubs than concert venues. Both Waxman and Abramov are also DJs. Recently they performed at Tel Aviv's Comfort 13 at a Glam-ou-rama theme party.
When asked if there are bands from the 1980s that influenced them, Abramov mentions Chris and Cozy. Waxman cites Soft Cell. "Marc Almond is my hero and because of him I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be the female version of him. When he came to perform in Israel, I went to the organizers and said, 'listen, this is my favorite singer.' In the end I sang two songs with him at the concert," she relates.
The name Mock Stereo comes from a sound effect, while "High in the Low 60s" is from the world of weather forecasting.
Abramov says he taught the rapper Dr. Dre to use an MPC60 sampler. "I worked in the 1980s at a Los Angeles music store, and someone walked in and asked about it. Suddenly I realized it's him and I taught him." Dre's band, N.W.A., became a classic using what it did with that sampler. Years later, DJ Shadow, made an entire career out of the MPC60 and created the genre of Sampletronics.
Waxman is marrying her boyfriend, the reality TV star Itai Shulberg, next month. She says she does not think her pregnancy will make the band short-lived. "There was a time," she says, "after we started working together, when I was underweight and Eli would win me over with food. He would call and wake me up and say, 'come on over, I made rice with all sorts of things.'"
Abramov: "I actually recall that it was you who ordered food from me. 'If there isn't any, I'm not coming.'"
Waxman: "Too bad we didn't document this period. There weren't any real fights between us. Maybe sometimes on the phone, but they passed quickly. I would dig into him over my problems." Abramov: "We're still a new group; we will have a lot more time to fight."
Mock Stereo is a chic duo that is likely to bring Waxman back to center stage after having spent time behind it in the DJ booth.
The audience, however, will no longer be the same as the one that went to Penguin in the 1980s and to Roxanne in the 1990s, but a younger audience that grew up on a broader range of musical styles and is used to downloading music without knowing when it was first released.
